Most of the photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) Many were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color in Photoshop before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here.

"Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. Fighting the fire on Baltimore Street." The first in a series of photographs from the fire, which burned for two days in February 1904, consuming much of downtown Baltimore. National Photo Company Collection glass negative, Library of Congress. View full size.
H.L. Mecnken, who was working as an editor for the Baltimore Morning Herald, wrote about the Great Fire of Baltimore in the second volume of his memoir "Newspaper Days."
The famous Red Light District!
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